1LNAV(1) General Commands Manual LNAV(1)
2
3
4
6 lnav - ncurses-based log file viewer
7
9 lnav [-hVsar] [logfile1 logfile2 ...]
10
12 The log file navigator, lnav, is an enhanced log file viewer that takes
13 advantage of any semantic information that can be gleaned from the
14 files being viewed, such as timestamps and log levels. Using this ex‐
15 tra semantic information, lnav can do things like interleaving messages
16 from different files, generate histograms of messages over time, and
17 providing hotkeys for navigating through the file. It is hoped that
18 these features will allow the user to quickly and efficiently zero in
19 on problems.
20
22 ? View/leave the online help text.
23
24 q Quit the program.
25
27 -h Print help and exit
28
29 -H Display the internal help text.
30
31 -n Run without the curses UI. (headless mode)
32
33 -c cmd Execute a command after the files have been loaded.
34
35 -f path
36 Execute the commands in the given file.
37
38 -I path
39 Add the given configuration directory to the search path.
40
41 -n Do not open the default syslog file if no files are given.
42
43 -q Quiet mode. Do not print the log messages after executing all
44 of the commands.
45
46 -i Install the given format files in the $HOME/.lnav/formats/in‐
47 stalled directory and exit.
48
49 -u Update formats installed from git repositories.
50
51 -C Check the configuration and exit. The log format files will be
52 loaded and checked. Any files given on the command-line will be
53 loaded checked to make sure they match a log format.
54
55 -d file
56 Write debug messages to the given file.
57
58 -V Print version information.
59
60 -r Recursively load files from the given directories.
61
62 -R Load older rotated log files as well.
63
64 -t Prepend timestamps to the lines of data being read in on the
65 standard input.
66
67 -w file
68 Write the contents of the standard input to this file.
69
70 Optional arguments:
71 logfile1
72 The log files or directories to view. If a directory is given,
73 all of the files in the directory will be loaded.
74
76 To load and follow the syslog file:
77
78 lnav
79
80 To load all of the files in /var/log:
81
82 lnav /var/log
83
84 To watch the output of make with timestamps prepended:
85
86 make 2>&1 | lnav -t
87
89 This manual page was written by Salvatore Bonaccorso <carnil@de‐
90 bian.org> for the Debian system (but may be used by others).
91
92
93
94 August 2022 LNAV(1)